Games that are popular and loved, but that you can't understand why.

[smudgey]

GTA4: going on massive killing sprees just isn't as fun when the game is being serious all about it. Other than a visual upgrade, i didn't feel like it really added anything to the series. And how many times do we have to hear "Hey cousin! How about we-" *hangs up*

 

[Henrik Persson]

WoW: The only MMO I've tried that's worse than this is WAR. It's just a terrible MMO, how could it possibly be so popular?

Bioshock: As people before me has said, a clunky, poor shooting game.

Pretty much all RTS and FPS games. To me almost nothing has happened since Dune 2 and ROTT respectively and I got bored with those games. They're both niche genres who grew way out of proportion.

 

[mrF00bar]

Halo 2 & 3. The Halo games are all good fun, but people go over the top about these two. There should have never have been any s equals, they destroyed what Halo could have been.

 

[Grayfayce]

Mass Effect. I thought it was an incredibly clumsy game, with a broken combat system.

 

[henno13]

*zips up flamesuit*

Final Fantasy - I have never understood how people can play that game, let alone how it has lasted to get 13 games in a series. It's not my "cup of tea". Yahtzee's opionion on XIII pretty much summed up my feelings on the entire saga. Actually, I feel the same way about every other MMO/RPG. The only RPG I could get into was Fallout 3.

[rant]

Oh yeah, any game from Zynga. The Escapist seems to thing that their flash applications on facebook classify as games, so I'll just let this out. How the fuck can farmville get 85 million players? It's just a flash application where you can't stop clicking, yet their players think it's the second coming of Chirst. I have friends that play that and other games from Zynga and I just say to them "What the fuck are you doing, go and buy a game made by professional game developers and go back to Farmville or whatever you play and see how fun it is"

[/rant]

 

[Nazulu]

WOW for starters. Sure the design is great but the game play wasn't anything special and the quests start to seem similar after awhile.

Modern Warfare 2. Nothing really different to make it so popular and with the whole issue with stopping private servers, glitches and unbalanced game play it is the most over-hyper game ever.

SSB Brawl. The game play sucks compared to Melee and the whole game is just so bland. Probably the best feature is the smash balls but some of the special moves are so over-powered it's ridiculous.

 

[mexicola]

Pokemon games - every last one I saw was just so damn yawn-inducing.

I'm sure there are a few more, but this is just the first thing that came to my mind after I read the thread title.

 

[Chris^^]

Mario. hmm.. run along, jump on things, rescue retarded woman.

 

[Vrex360]

I have to agree with a few others who have said that threads like these are essentially a welcome invitation to flame bait (I ain't biting by the way) and that really we've seen a LOT of threads like these and what they really amount to is a troll/list thread that discourages conversation but seems to accidentally invoke flame wars.
However, I won't judge and I apologise if I seem to be a little harsh but that's just how I've always seen it. But still the OP is new so I can't really jutify being angry even if I wanted to.
I'll reply anyway with my usual answer:

Call of Duty and Bad Company both strike me as rather uninteresting largely because I'm not a fan of shooters set in the real world, I can sort of see the appeal but really I prefer games set in a sci fi or fantasy setting as a result I'm bound to get endlessly more amounts of fun playing any of the Halo games then I would out of Call of Duty.
So while I can certainly see great design within the games and it is entirely fair that people like them, not really my thing because while I can sort of get the appeal, I'm not the audience it appeals to.

So yeah, that's my answer and once again I apologise if my first rant seemed a little harsh, certainly wasn't my intention.

 

[Nhilus]

WoW. I loved the RTS games, but I consider WoW to be a spinoff rather than an actual game in the series. I'd love to see them put Warcraft 4 out, but that's never going to happen, because Blizzard's pretty much wiping their asses with 100 dollar bills because of WoW.

Umm... it is a spin off, one designed to try and bring across the story to a wider range of audience, it would have been successful with it but now to keep it fuelled they are just making stuff up, they should bring out a Warcraft 4 before they continue with it, which they unfortunately won't because of there player base being so heavily on WoW.

Personally I dislike all CoD games past 2 and question WoW fanboyism, I play WoW but I wouldn't say it's great, it's stagnated recently if you ask me.

 

[Tony2077]

God of War series. I recently bought a PS3 and have GoW 1-2 HD and made myself beat them because I hear how they are great games. It was a difficult task since I didn't enjoy the plot, the button mashing, the camera that fights against you, and the horrid use of Greek Mythology. I think I know why people like these games, but I don't wanna sound like an ass on a high horse, so I will just say these are games I just don't get why these games are 'popular and loved, but that you can't understand why.'

its fun to dismember stuff well that about as much as i understand

Yeah, the blood and gore is neat, but does that make the game great? I think many people would say yes, I am not one of them tho. I think I missed out since so many people rant and rave about great it is. Oh well, maybe I will get in on the 'next cool thing' and feel like I belong in the swirl of the masses ; )

I think that would count as being a sheep lets follow the masses. The masses may not always be right but that depends on what it is

 

[Legion]

People on this site need to look up a dictionary for the words 'mediocre' and 'generic', this is really starting to get ridiculous.

Call of Duty and Bad Company both strike me as rather uninteresting largely because I'm not a fan of shooters set in the real world, I can sort of see the appeal but really I prefer games set in a sci fi or fantasy setting as a result I'm bound to get endlessly more amounts of fun playing any of the Halo games then I would out of Call of Duty.
So while I can certainly see great design within the games and it is entirely fair that people like them, not really my thing because while I can sort of get the appeal, I'm not the audience it appeals to.

So yeah, that's my answer and once again I apologise if my first rant seemed a little harsh, certainly wasn't my intention.

Same here. I think my issue largely stems from how "realistic" they try and be in comparison to how realistic they actually are. Hell, you can watch the news and see that real wars are not fought anything like how they are in them games, the duties of soldiers in reality are not even that similar.

 

[Mr_Paisley]

Mass Effect 2, MASS EFFECT 2! Fucking-a! Okay, listen, the first one was one of my favorite games of today. BUT, the second one writes out almost EVERYONE that was cool from the first game. Why? What could they POSSIBLY be doing that would make them busy enough NOT to help you save the galaxy? Anderson has one wheel of dialogue, Ashley/Kaiden are somehow pissy, Tali somehow joins despite bad blood between Cerberus and the fleet.

I'm going to leave it at that for now. I've written countlessly about why Mass Effect 2 fails to live up to the first game.

 

[Vrex360]

*zips up flamesuit*

Final Fantasy - I have never understood how people can play that game, let alone how it has lasted to get 13 games in a series. It's not my "cup of tea". Yahtzee's opionion on XIII pretty much summed up my feelings on the entire saga. Actually, I feel the same way about every other MMO/RPG. The only RPG I could get into was Fallout 3.

[rant]

Oh yeah, any game from Zynga. The Escapist seems to thing that their flash applications on facebook classify as games, so I'll just let this out. How the fuck can farmville get 85 million players? It's just a flash application where you can't stop clicking, yet their players think it's the second coming of Chirst. I have friends that play that and other games from Zynga and I just say to them "What the fuck are you doing, go and buy a game made by professional game developers and go back to Farmville or whatever you play and see how fun it is"

[/rant]

Okay, usually I try to keep and open mind to people's preferances but I have to agree with you about Farmville. While it certainly seems like a casual window to allow people who usually aren't interested in games to give it a try, I just think that as a perspective of a regular gamer the game is uninteresting and even as a casual gamer this game would seem uninteresting.
I cannot fathom the fun of doing the same anonymous stuff over and over again, I once did it on Facebook because I was bored and let me tell you, I got sick of it really quickly and in the world of hundreds of great little casual puzzle games and platform games and little 2D shooters, like of all the casual games out there, I cannot fathom why this is the one that gets so much attention.

Ah well, I guess I still have to respect people's tastes.

 

[Vrex360]

Call of Duty and Bad Company both strike me as rather uninteresting largely because I'm not a fan of shooters set in the real world, I can sort of see the appeal but really I prefer games set in a sci fi or fantasy setting as a result I'm bound to get endlessly more amounts of fun playing any of the Halo games then I would out of Call of Duty.
So while I can certainly see great design within the games and it is entirely fair that people like them, not really my thing because while I can sort of get the appeal, I'm not the audience it appeals to.

So yeah, that's my answer and once again I apologise if my first rant seemed a little harsh, certainly wasn't my intention.

Same here. I think my issue largely stems from how "realistic" they try and be in comparison to how realistic they actually are. Hell, you can watch the news and see that real wars are not fought anything like how they are in them games, the duties of soldiers in reality are not even that similar.

Yeah, that too. I had missed that point about the actual realism element not even being all that realistic. Kudos.

P.S lovin' the new avatar, Machines.

 

[Legion]

Anderson has one wheel of dialogue

They didn't want to make the game a repetition of the first one, which is why you never visit the Presidium or the Wards on the Citadel either I imagine (although I do wish they had included more of Anderson and the Citadel personally).

Ashley/Kaiden are somehow pissy

Your Commander is presumed dead for 2 years and when he returns he doesn't make contact with you despite everything you have done together, he is also now working for the enemy of the army he (and you) once served. Wouldn't you be pissed off?

Tali somehow joins despite bad blood between Cerberus and the fleet.

She loves Shepard that's why. If Shepard is a female then admittedly it makes slightly less sense.

Yeah, that too. I had missed that point about the actual realism element not even being all that realistic. Kudos.

P.S lovin' the new avatar, Machines.

Kudos to you, for not taking the Halo bait, it really was inevitable it would come up, wasn't it.

Also, thank you, It seemed fitting considering my user name.

 

[brunothepig]

the fact that dying didn't matter after I first died didn't help.

I had that same problem. I still love the game, and that didn't detract from the atmosphere enough to ruin it for me, but I think that was the biggest stumbling point for Bioshock.
I have to say Halo as well. Seriously. I don't get it. And I expected this to have already been said, but I find it amusing that it was the first post...

 

[Tony2077]

Anderson has one wheel of dialogue

They didn't want to make the game repetitive of the first one, which is why you never visit the Presidium or the Wards on the Citadel either I imagine.

Ashley/Kaiden are somehow pissy

Your Commander is presumed dead for 2 years and when he returns he doesn't make contact with you despite everything you have done together, he is also now working for the enemy of the army he (and you) once served. Wouldn't you be pissed off?

Tali somehow joins despite bad blood between Cerberus and the fleet.

She loves Shepard that's why. If Shepard is a female then admittedly it makes less sense.

true friendship can be a powerful thing

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I'm sure all of us have come across atleast ONE game that everyone's raved about, and that you yourself did not find so appealing.. Feel free to list them here, with your reasons. By the way, this isn't a forum created so that you fanboys can defend their favourite games; it wasn't made to be spiteful, so don't make it so.

The games I found to be this way are Half Life 2 and Bioshock. Half Life 2 felt entertaining but not exciting enough, but the revolutionary physics engine was lost on me due to it being played a few years later. Bioshock was also played later, but it still has cutting edge graphics, etc. I just didn't feel the atmosphere as much as I thought I would.. And the fact that dying didn't matter after I first died didn't help.

Personally I thought HL2 was better than HL1, which I played years and years ago and liked. And Bioshock I liked although did not absolutely love. So don't know if I would agree with you on those two, I thought they were both good.

Dunno if they're universally loved but "F.E.A.R" and "Rome: Total War" would be my choices. "Total War" just seems like a rather mediocre RTS game with bad graphics and sound and where you have zero investment in what's happening. It's like trying to care about a bunch of cardboard cutouts of people - I don't get it. "FEAR" is just a really bad game - repetitive, mediocre, the story is cliche'd and makes no sense, the atmospherics are just stupid, and every time something "scary" happens the action essentially stops so you don't miss the moment. (Meaning that that's the one time you can be certain of not being attacked!)